MYSTERY: 24-Hour Chapbook Challenge VIII
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Released 15/11/25
Welcome to the eighth instalment of our sporadic poetry challenge series: we send out a one-word prompt to participating poets, they reply with a brand-new poem, we collate and have it online, available to download in a free digital chapbook, all within 24 hours! I chose the word ‘mystery’ after reading An Ode To Darkness by Sigri Sandberg, exploring the wonder, the virtues and the dangers of an absence of light. I was struck by a particular part of one sentence: “The universe is the greatest mystery of our existence…”. The reader may agree or disagree on that, but it’s hard to argue that there isn’t at least some alluring element of the unknown involved in the stars, the galaxies, nebulas, black holes and other astronomical peculiarities. Therefore, our cover image is from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, capturing a “billowing cloud of cold interstellar gas and dust rising from a tempestuous stellar nursery located in the Carina Nebula, 7,500 light-years away in the southern constellation Carina. This pillar of dust and gas serves as an incubator for new stars and is teeming with new star-forming activity.” 
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